The third annual 50 on Fire;awards celebration hits the Innovation District on December 4th. Buy tickets today before early bird pricing ends October 31st.

I might be biased, but here it is anyway: Media is the hardest category to pick winners in. There’s a battery of stories in and out of each week (let alone through a year) and a scrum of reporters, editors and producers chasing them. Sometimes one story stands out: Some of last year’s winners distinguished themselves with coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing. 

But more often, impact in news media is in the eye of the reader. It doesn’t help that the buzzwords on industry lips today are likely to be chuckle-worthy by 2015. (Remember “hyperlocal?”)  

With that in mind, our advisory board took a hard look at the 40-plus excellent nominations we received in the media category for this year’s 50 on Fire awards. Here are the 13 finalists we picked.

MuckRock: Legacy newsroom culture and news-media business models that supported investigative reporting are collapsing all over the place. Since its founding in 2010, MuckRock has been trying to fill that gap with a subscription service for public-records requests. This year, it’s looking like they might have a legitimate business. They’ve added full-time staff and founder Michael Morisy encamped at Stanford U. with a John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship dedicated to the project.

@bostonpolice: Under Cheryl Fiandaca’s leadership in 2013, the Boston Police Department caught the attention of the world for using Twitter to provide live updates on public safety and other developments in the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers. In 2014, @bostonpolice has continued to put on a clinic as a direct channel of communication with the Boston public–for everything from taking guns off the streets to photos of puppy police dogs in oversized bulletproof vests.

 WGBH: WGBH has long been PBS’ largest production contributor. Since 2012, when it acquired Public Radio International, it’s been on a content push in radio as well–snapping up Jim Braude and Margery Eagan in 2013 and growing its newsroom headcount by factors of 10. It’s been dogged by controversy over major donor Ed Koch, but audiences seem to like what GBH is putting out. In 2014, the radio station kicked off the year with a record-setting radio market share, 3.0 percent. GBH hasn’t slacked in TV, either, rolling out two new series that highlight a Boston cultural vein that doesn’t get enough cred: Music. The station is now broadcasting live concerts on Front Row Boston and setting up an original singing competition for amateur choirs on Sing That Thing. In July, GBH was able to trumpet 13 Emmy nominations for news and documentaries. 

The DocYard: Speaking of Boston cultural veins that get no credit, filmmaking is a good example, especially documentary filmmaking. Now in its 4th year, the DocYard is establishing itself as a destination film festival for the genre. They bring films that are unique to this market, typically bringing the directors for Q&A with the audience. Last year, they kicked off a partnership with MIT Media Lab and began adding documentary shorts to their screenings–a sub-genre that’s even less frequently seen, but no less appreciated.

Trailer for “The Notorious Mr. Bout,” which DocYard presents Nov. 17.

Sharman Sacchetti: Fox 25 reporter Sharman Sacchetti got more attention than a TV reporter’s normal due this year when gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker tried to cut short a line of questioning, calling her “sweetheart” while cameras rolled. The gaffe drew Baker some negative press, but also highlighted Sacchetti’s penchant for straightforward questions of public figures during this governor’s race.

Mike Felger and Tony Massarotti: If you walk out on the streets of Boston and ask a random passer-by, there’s a good chance that they not only know who Felger & Mazz are, but would know what their takes are on various issues. In a city where everyone has an opinion, theirs are relevant. They run the most polarizing radio show in Boston, but love them or hate them, a majority of fans tune into listen to them, making them the highest-rated show on Boston’s highest-rated sports radio station.

Ricarose Roque: MIT’s Media Lab has been a force for combining storytelling and technology in innovative ways. Ricarose Roque is one of the researchers working on that effort, particularly the Scratch programming language that lets kids and families tell stories digitally. “I ponder how can we design computing tools, activities and learning experience that can engage a broader range of people,” she told a teaching blog. She also did a kids computing event with Nas and Mayor Marty Walsh.

Jenna Russell: The Boston Globe reporter drew a highly unusual pre-emptive lawsuit from Steward Health System over a story she wrote examining how the health care operator’s hospitals handled mental health patients. Spoiler: The Globe ran the story, anyway.

Eric Moskowitz is another Boston Globe reporter who’s had a hot year: An investigation into how a lenient state judicial system gave Jared Remy too many second chances; a 50th anniversary remembrance of 1964’s summer of civil rights activism; a day spent with track workers at the sunset of Suffolk Downs. We can’t wait to see what he writes next. 

Mona Vernon started the Thomson Reuters Innovation Lab earlier this year. She worked for a couple of Massachusetts sensor technology startups (Sionex and Axsun) before joining Thomson Reuters in 2010. Since starting the Innovation Lab, she’s partnered with startups like Tamr and generally gotten out and evangelized the big-data opportunity in fintech. Here’s her keynote slide deck from the Boston Data Science meetup in April.

Kate Norton: Press secretary for the first new mayor of Boston in 20 years, Norton has been hands-on and very much in the public eye since Marty Walsh’s election, helping his office become more technologically advanced and transparent, all while targeting a younger population not used to talking with City Hall. 

Brian L. Cronin and Anja C. Nilsson: Concern over sex assault on campus has swept through universities all over the U.S., prodded by a White House newly focused on Title IX enforcement. At Harvard, the campus newspaper had a special role in pushing forward reform. In April, Harvard Crimson editorial chairs Brian Cronin and Anja Nilsson put their signatures on “Dear Harvard: You Win,” an anonymous letter from a Harvard student who suffered through a sexual assault and Harvard’s response. The detailed account made personal the situation too many young women find themselves in at college. Months later, Harvard announced a major overhaul of its procedures for handling allegations of campus sexual assault.

Grant Welker: When a long-simmering family ownershipdispute erupted over the multi-billion-dollar grocery chain that is Market Basket, TV and digital outlets could smell a hit. For the Lowell Sun, this story was meat and potatoes. The Sun’s Grant Welker had been covering Market Basket’s unique business model through the good and the bad, for years. His reporting stayed steady, fair and thorough, throughout what was undoubtedly the biggest New England business story of the year.

Check out all the 50 on Fire finalist announcements here.

More on 50 on Fire:

5 Reasons to Get Your 50 on Fire Early Bird Tickets Today

Next 50 on Fire Meetup Hits Society on High November 19th

Photo Credit: American Inno
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